The Middle Zone:

...From the very beginning, the Hungarian Revolution took a different shape from that of other Soviet satellites...

...Borsody also undertakes a thorough investigation of the causes of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy...

...In the 20th century it became the target first of Nazi, then of Soviet imperialism...

...The term "Middle Zone" is not the author's invention: It was coined by F. A. Voigt, late editor of the English weekly Nineteenth Century and After...

...Borsody attributes great significance to the advantages the Monarchy offered from the point of view of European peace and security, but he doesn't share the opinion held by many that the dissolution of the Monarchy was the cause of all the subsequent calamities...

...Today it is the Soviet Union which bars peace in the Middle Zone, but the evil conditions prevailing in the Middle Zone stem from the two wars and the double failure to create a durable peace...

...No country underwent a humiliation so profound as Hungary's and in no other country were Communist leaders so alienated from the people as were Matyas Rakosi and his cronies...

...Borsody notes that such considerate and yielding attitudes greatly contributed to the Middle Zone's finally becoming a Soviet satellite...

...There is much truth in Borsody's thesis, although I think the sad lot of Middle Europe was brought about by more important factors in world policy...

...As to the future, Borsody thinks that the destiny of the Middle Zone still depends on whether it will be possible to bring about the cooperation and solidarity of the peoples that inhabit it...

...After World War II he set aside the federative projects worked out in London during the War and with all his power, not even refraining from violent transfers of populations, tried to make multinational Czechoslovakia into a national state...

...There will be no peace in Middle Europe until, first, the Soviet Union leaves the countries it is occupying today and, second, the peoples of those countries find one another: The condition for sound development in Middle Europe is federation...

...According to him, the Old Monarchy might have been able both to maintain its territorial integrity and grant freedom to its peoples, if only it had recognized in time the necessity of internal reforms and had transformed itself into a free federation of peoples...

...No friendship among these peoples could develop because, on the one side, Czechs, Rumanians and Serbs refused any revision of the frontiers drawn by the Treaty and, on the other, Hungary's irredentists would not settle for less than integral restitution of the old frontiers...

...He offers an admirable analysis of the great turning points, the changes that occurred in the several countries, the mechanism of the seizure of power by the Communists and the compliant attitude of the West, which between 1945 and 1949 accompanied Communist conquest of Middle Europe...

...He believes the treaty was unjust and overly severe, but this does not relieve the Hungarian ruling class of the responsibility for prolonging an obsolete, anachronistic political system between the wars, and for refusing to introduce the social reforms requiring both by common sense and its own best interest...

...What also militated against its success was, in the Borsody's opinion, the Trianon Peace Treaty which rendered difficult any understanding and cooperation between the Hungarians and the neighboring peoples...

...The Nazi and later Soviet occupation of Middle Europe has a rather extensive literature and the mechanism of the two conquests is fairly well known...

...The section of Borsody's book dealing with the significance of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 as viewed from the angle of world politics is of outstanding interest...

...The fate of the Middle Zone was sealed, Borsody emphasizes, because no solidarity existed between the nations of the area, and their desperate struggles almost invited the conquering designs of foreign imperialisms...

...Borsody paints an erudite and objective picture of the postwar Soviet conquest, too...

...According to Borsody, Benes departed from the ideas proclaimed by Thomas Masaryk and instead of aiming at cooperation and understanding between the two peoples—i.e., bringing about their federation—he showed himself a fanatical advocate of the national state and so furthered the victory of nationalism...

...Significantly, Borsody dedicated his book to the memory of Professor Oscar Jaszi of Oberlin, the apostle of the Middle-European Federation who died three years ago and his analyses and proposals show him to be a keen believer in federation for the region...

...The unbridled nationalism that became the rule among the people of the Hapsburg Monarchy was one of the reasons why the Danubian Federation, the dream of Oscar Jaszi and other great thinkers, never became reality...

...That territory is called Middle Zone by Stephen Borsody though in other political writings it goes under the name of Central Europe, Middle-Europe, Southeastern Europe, the Danube Valley and in recent anti-Communist literature Central East-Europe...

...After World War I it was no longer possible to reorganize the Monarchy, but there still were ways to hold together the peoples that once belonged to it and so to secure the undeniable advantages that stemmed from its existence...

...The chances for peace in Middle-Europe and for a federation of its peoples were decreased not only by Trianon and nationalism gaining the upper hand, but also by the policies of Czechoslovakia and, chiefly, those of Eduard Benes...

...and is the territory lying between the German and the Russian Empires...

...What Borsody is interested in is the question of what factors led to the disintegration of the area and thus furthered the designs of Hitler and Stalin...

...Borsody unequivocally draws the line between himself and those who claim the Treaty of Trianon accounts for all the evils in interwar Hungary...

...The organization that would have served these purposes was federation...

...According to him, Imre Nagy can hardly be blamed for the fact that he was unable to reach a compromise on the Polish pattern with the Soviet Government...

...But, as Benedetto Croce said, "In history we have no reason for asking what would have happened, if something had happened otherwise...

...Borsody quotes the James F. Byrnes' dictum that "The United States sympathizes with the effort of the Soviet to create close and friendly alliances with its Central and East European neighbors," and also recalls Dean Acheson's declaration to the effect that it is good "that along the frontiers of the Soviet Union governments with friendly feelings for it came into being—which is an essential requirement both of the security of the Soviet Union and world peace...

...Reviewed by Gyula Borbandi Editor, "New Horizon" TRIUMPH OF TYRANNY gives the history of Central Europe from the end of World War I up to our day...

...The author's attention is particularly fo-cussed on Hungary and Czechoslovakia, because the past history of the Middle Zone was decisively influenced by the mutual relations of these two countries and its future also partly depends on the development of those relations...

...Possibly, if Hitler and Stalin hadn't found the Middle European states dead set against one another but had been faced by a strong and well-functioning federation, everything would have happened differently...